Mythbustin!

Tassie has a terrible reputation for being intolerant of alternative lifestyles. In fact it was the last state to decriminalise homosexuality.

We've made some big changes but, in my opinion, none as big as this!

Cross Species Parenting!

It's OK, none of the goat kids are mine.....


But yesterday morning there was this:

This afternoon there was this:

And tonight there was this:

The nest has both chicken and duck eggs, and they're taking it in turns to warm them.

Things will be rather interesting when they hatch, methinks. Not looking forward to dragging chicken corpses out of the pond at all....

The week in review

I are busy as a busy thing!

Last wednesday I sent off four chooks in trade for some drafting of armour patterns to use in a laser cutter.

Then on thursday seven more turned up with clucky white hen. Although I noted this afternoon that the little black one was dead, not sure why...

Still have two hens sitting, and the duck and the peahen have both dissappeared after lots and lots of mating rituals.


Spent time on the weekend working on fences and putting the flashing on the peacock shelter and wiring up the windows and making it all good. Now all it needs is a door, shutters, and a paint job.


Here's the middle paddock all fenced up, with two new gates. Goats are much with the happy.

Today I also broke new ground by pushing a fence around a blackberry hedge and through an ivy thicket. Should be right now until February, when I think I will hard fence all the way up to the road on the far side of Mary's place and down to the front border to bring it all into line, before stepping further out into the scrub and removing the fire hazard. Don't worry Miss Krin, none of it is native!

Once I had the yard cleaned up, goats to bed, tools away, I thought, time to look at the bathroom.

I looked at it and then...

It Imploded!!
This is all a really good find. The peatrap is in the right place to move across to where the new basin will go, and then I can put one in for draining the floo and one over in the old hot water service space to cater for the new shower. I reckon I should have in under control before Canty Faire.... I hope.

Weekend in Review

Welly, welly, welly, well....
A goodish weekend of mostly successes.
Animal feeds and shoes procured without difficulty (new shoes!!).
Drove to hobart in the midst of the Saturday morning nuff-nuffs, bit longer than I wanted but there was enough fat in there to make it to country leather (red leather!!) and to the imperial bookshop and the other bookshop who I forget the name of.

The TSO were great as always, although the jazz symphony was a wee bit wanky (I kept expecting roger rabbit to come bouncing across the stage. VERY Warner Bros, meep meep!!).
The new composition "Cloudforms" was spectacular. It was a minimalist work which drew up all sorts of imagery of cirrus and nimbus and then moved on to actual rain, fantastic! The percussionist looked like he was about to drop, but got backed up when the flutes and clarinets put down there instruments and started running a beaten sequence on tiny little bells hanging off their music stands.

The party was OK, I had fun for a while, but then I ran out of talk, and got blanked a few times and a sense of depe isolation set in. Rather than downing the party I left precipitously, went to bed and cried a bit. Shitty really, but I'll cope. At least I know for sure that I left Miss Nipples with a happy smile on her face (In a nice non-oath-breaking kind of way).

The tourney was well fun. Fought much better than last week. I'm almost not ashamed to be seen fighting by the boss next week in the SF Baronial (must find a consort).

Drove home in the thick of the Sunday night shambles and got a vey happy-making text on the way home (thank-you Miss D and J).

Sitting back now, having sparked the fire and looking at the port across the way...

Must contact Piers this week for his hypocras recipe to make a cple of batches in time for the Hunt Event I'm running in September. Plotting and scheming abounds, and I have Baronial approval!

Oh yes! Goat inspection shows a definite movement in Stella's belly, and the kid has dropped and moved forward. Not long now!

3 Roosters, 4 Drakes and one old aviary heading off via freecycle on thurdsay night, to a very worthy receiver.

And... It's time to swear

In theory this week has been reasonable, a few ups, a few downs.
Today I found another down, which I feel officially makes this a not so good week.
Thursday morning saw the absence of my Betsy girl. She didn't come in for breakfast, thursday, friday or today. I've checked all the roads round these parts, and she's not in any of the gutters or the like, so my guess is that she is somewhere in the dense woodland around my house.

I loved her, and I miss her.

Monday saw the finding of a big mistake in the first part of my devest garb which required the unpicking of 16 hours worth of hand sewing, which took another 5 hours. Fuck.

Today I went to inspect the hive and maybe take some honey.
This is how I left the hive.
When I opened it, I found this.
It's an infestation of a small grey-brown moth. I'm not sure what the order is, that is whether the bees left, and the moths moved in, or the moths pushed the bees out, either way, it's back to square one. Again. Fuck.

Miss clucky hen extrordinaire has decided to sit again (third time this season). Time to get all the birds into one yard again. Probably need to do it before festival.

Le Sigh.

Fuck.

We don't 'old wit tat kulcha stuff round these parts, y'ere?

In an absolute first for our little town, the TSO decided to do an evening concert, with most of their string section and their principle trumpet. Woohoo!

I saw the flier for this on Monday and have spent the week looking for someone to go with, but of my friends down here there is Noone that I would go to a classical concert with. Things I miss about being in love; someone to share this sort of stuff with.

It also shook home how much of a fish out of water I am in this part of Tassie, even at my new work where having a brain isn't frowned upon (as long as you operate it accroding to the SOP which has been previously validated) . I love it here lifestyle wise, but it's a little frustrating in this regard sometimes.

Anyway, by the time I got to the concert I was a bit sad and emotional, so when the strings struck up to the first Rossini sonata, I nearly burst into tears, but managed to keep it together. I'd really forgotten how great music in the concert format can be. I really haven't been since I last went and saw my sister play, except for a 7 piece chamber set in Vienna.

The most promising bit is that the TSO has instituted a regular regional program, so I can go out again in a fortnight.

Tonights set was;

Rossini - String Sonata No.1
Neruda - Trumpet Concerto
Puccini - I Crisantemi
Tchaikovky - Souvenir de Florence

After the concert I got in a vigorous debate over state vs. local sewage management, and the impacts of the Gunns pulp mill, local paper business' and the direction of Latrobe as a town, with one of the local councillors. Very entertaining, almost had me considering running for local council again....

Sad news, after a couple of days illness my favorite hen (the one who would sit when I put my hand above her, and never ran away) was so sad this morning, that I had to kill her. Sadness and grumpiness was had all day on this one.

The rest of the weekend

The rest of the weekend didn't go to plan at all.
The weather was waaay stinky.
So I slept in, did my exercises, and went for a walk.
The gate didn't happen until Monday and the goats didn't go in till Wednesday.

Made the lasagne on Sunday night.

Lot's of red sauce, white sauce and homemade pasta

Also made a heap of fettucini

And of course the gate.
And here's how far I got on the hutches

God I need my energy back.

Found it!

Woohoo! in cleaning the pile of crap out of the corner of the lounge room, I found the lead for the camera!

This evening I have;

Stripped the bed
Washed the sheets
Hung them out
Cleaned up all the clucked on but unhatched eggs
Taken the Vacola jars for trade to the car
Cleaned the corner of the lounge up
Finished all the felling from the November Crown Garb!!
Fed watered and inspected all the animals
Updated the Blog 3 times
Made dinner
Done the dishes
Thought about refurbishing the bathroom.
Fixed the boob downlight in the bedroom.

Now I'm having a little spell before putting the new sheets on the bed.

Here's some randomish pics I took this afternoon.

Here we have my best sitting hen, mother to a fantastic breed which stoop when you put your hand over them. Way cool. There's actually 9 chicks in frame.

In the foreground here you can see Stella, the happiest and nicest goat in the world. And behind her is Winston, the sookiest.

This is the 4 head that showed up this afternoon. Kind of like miniture emus. You can see mum retreating in the top of frame.

And the bathroom, which I'm seriously thinking about renovating

How the time flies

Dropped off my own private radar for a while there, and with
things changing so massively, I have found new value in the whole blog concept.

So what's been happening?

Chooks
After the earlier efforts at hatching by the girls no going so well, all the regulars went back to the nests and brought forth in style.

I'm now in posession of another 20 birds, with a few more expected soon.

Bees
The bees have behaved. I pillaged them for a skerrick of honey from a full frame, which is delicious, and now I can leave them alone for a while.

Goats
Stella, the very lovely and friendly goat, came into season a week or two after Crown and I got into touch with the lady I sold a billy kid to last year, only to find out that her neighbor had poisoned the poor bugger.

Frustration ensued, and after a search, I found a fella by the name of Winston, who has all the assets required to perform the task at hand. Which three weeks later he did.

Turns out he's the sookiest goat ever. Drives me nuts with his bleating.

So now it's just the wait until the girl drops the kid(s) and I'm able to hand raise them and make my own cheese.

November Crown
After all the prep, and the huge effort put in by all, November Crown went off with a minimum of hitches.

Pickups and dropoffs went OK except for a few oddities.

The tourney worked and the winner was found.

The candleabras looked fantastic, with only the odd wax river descending from above. The thrones added greatly to the feel of the high table and the band made everything great.

The feast was OK.

All in all, very worth the effort.

Silver Arrow Tourney
Early December we held the annual silver arrow tourney. While a good time was had by most, there were dramas, which were entertaining and it was the location of the cathartic event, which sucked.

Seperation
Between Silver Arrow tourney, and Christmas, SWMBO left. Since then I've been learning how to be on my own again.

New years
New years was great. I escaped to Qld where I stayed with friends who were happy to just let me do my own thing. Walked up Mt Gravatt a few times, went to a new years party which went very well indeed, helped them with their renovations, and participated in my first ever fondue party.

The next 3 days were all pain though, as I recovered from complete exhaustion.

12th Night
12th night saw me in Sydney, staying with Miss D and J, who were very nice, if a little hammered by the humidity and heat.

I had lots of chats with many different folk, most of whom were very nice and sensitive about where I was at. Also had chats with a few who were in a similar emotional space, which was fantastic for the anti-Robinson Crusoe vibe.

I fought like a sack of poo in the tourney, until I borrowed a better stick from J, which improved things markedly, until a freak shot from Paddy put me out for the afternoon.

Spent Monday cruising, then shopping with Baggy Trousers, where we found the silk for my devest garb.

I had a few profound moments over the weekend, but one of the biggest was realising that some of the folk in the area think I'm far more intelligent than I do. Very strange, as I normally budget 3 minutes brain time to understand the sentences that come out of them, and feel kinda dumb most of the time. Don't know what to think about that.

Still don't really understand Keats

Things Projecty and Farmy

Had a realisation this weekend that this could be a handy place to record other stuff, kind of like the log/almanac I always mean to use but never do....

So last Monday this little guy woke me up;
Only 11 weeks till chop day if it's a boy.
Interesting to note the low hatch rates this year, after an exceptionally dry winter. This white hen normally hatches 10-15 chicks per clutch and one of the brown hens gave up on her clutch of 8 eggs, although there were a couple of decent thunderstorms in there as well.

Given that my one solitary duck is laying I might invest of borrow an incubator to hatch out some more gal pals for her, so that the boys stop rogering her every 10-15 seconds. She's starting to waddle kind of funny.

Spent a couple of hours on Saturday morning working the bees, reorganised things in the hives from all ideals to having a couple of full-depth supers in. Populated them with 50-50 ideal comb and full-depth foundation, so that I can build up a stock of full depth comb.

















Also took our first harvest of honey;
Very yummy.
















Spent Saturday Afternoon and most of Sunday making gothic arch chairs for the Barony, with Miss A, Mr W and Mr D. These will look very funky once painted and setup up behind High table.









Now I'm trapped in the land of day one back at work after the change-over to daylight savings, sucky sucky ball balls.